170,000 Year-Old Cave Skeleton Yields Ancient Neanderthal DNA

April 13, 2015 1:09 AM

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A calcite coated Neanderthal skeleton, originally found in an Italian cave in 1993, has now yielded some of the oldest known DNA of a Neanderthal.

The skeleton, found near Altamura, Italy, in Southern Spain, is the most complete skeleton of a human ancestor ever to have been found. Interestingly enough, while the skeleton is being billed as that of a Neanderthal (a relative of modern humans that went extinct 40,000 years ago), some of its char...